Product Description:

When "Rock Around the Clock" topped the charts in the spring of 1955, it seemed to have come out of nowhere. Few people knew that it was not exactly an overnight success, and that the "new sound" was not exactly new. Bill Haley had been doing pretty much the same kind of music long before the world discovered him. His style was already fully evolved by the time "Rock Around the Clock" made him a star, and this collection of Bill Haley & the Comets' early recordings proves it.

THE BEST OF BILL HALEY AND HIS COMETS 1951-1954 is an exciting glimpse into the formative years of the Haley sound and the very birth of rock & roll. While the earliest Holiday label singles still have a strong Western Swing influence, by 1952, all the musical elements were firmly in place. Even Danny Cedrone's guitar solo on "Rock This Joint" is the same one he would make famous on "Rock Around the Clock" two years later, a surprising bit of foreshadowing. Long before anyone knew what to call this wild new music that was rock & roll, Haley was playing it. The rest is history.